'FlashForward' goes mole hunting with Seth MacFarlane

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At the opening of “FlashForward,” we got a flashback to three years ago, a moment in time when Mark had just gotten shot. He promised Olivia at that point that he would always put his family before his job. Naturally, the first thing we saw him do in the present was leave his house with a packed bag so he could go live with Wedeck for a while.

A little out of the blue no? To me that felt like the producers bowing to the inevitability of what Mark and Olivia saw in their flash, not a natural outgrowth of what we’ve seen this season. Olivia may have been perturbed with Mark for not wanting to pick up and move out of the state, but the jump from that to their getting separated is a large one. In fact, I’d say it’s a huge one.

Now, some might argue that he was moving out to protect his family, especially as we saw some creepy guy following Olivia and Charlie at an amusement park. Sure, that guy turned out to be an agent working for Mark to protect his family, but clearly Mark thinks they’re in danger and recognizes that his not being there doesn’t really make them any safer. So I can’t see that “safety” is the reason he moved out.

Some of the reasons for Mark’s moving out have to do with Lloyd. But, is Olivia really going to hop into bed so quickly with Lloyd just because Mark moved out? Lloyd did, potentially, get himself one step closer to Olivia’s bed by stopping at the hospital to talk to her and acting all sheepish and goofy (in my mind, Olivia goes for sheepish and goofy).

Apparently, Frost can actually see the future — well, sort of, he’s actually just flashed a lot. Not only that, but he timed moves in a series of chess matches years ago so as to leave a phone number in Morse Code for Benford. If he’s doing that, isn’t he light years ahead of them? How are they ever going to catch up?

Mark & Demetri took a trip to S.F. to chat with a guy who played chess with Frost once upon a time. The guy was dead. Mark felt like he was their best lead. I’m not sure why, they had no evidence that Frost ever talked with the guy after their chess matches back in the ’80s. Let me ask you — if their best lead is a guy who played “a few games of chess” 20-plus years ago, does their investigation stand any sort of chance? I think that whole diversion only occurred so as to bring back to the fore the mole investigation.

That makes it a pretty poor device, but at least the result was good – Vogel showed up with a bunch of folks, shoved the entire Mosaic Investigation (save Mark) into a conference room, and went mole hunting. What did we learn? That Seth MacFarlane’s character, Agent Curdy, plays RPGs on his computer at work.

Oh! We also learned that the mole is Marcie. They worked that out because she only sometimes puts sugar in her coffee. Good bit of detecting that, plus it was awesome that Janis beat Marcie up good. If only Janis could have stopped Marcie before Curdy got shot. And for all you mole fans, not to fret, Janis is a mole too.

Quick flashes:

Frost said in his tape recording that he, just like Demetri, often (as in “in many of his visions”) dies on March 15.

Bryce’s girl from Japan, Keiko, has apparently been hanging out at “their” restaurant for a long time. He totally almost went into the place and saw her tonight, but he was too busy kissing Nicole. It’s okay though, because Keiko was there drinking with her very friendly new boss.

For those out there rooting for Keiko and Bryce to work out, the new boss may not be a huge problem as he and Keiko both got busted due to the employment of some illegal workers (like Keiko). Wait, that totally throws another obstacle between her and Bryce, doesn’t it?

The Mogwai reference was a bad one. Now if Keiko only wanted to eat after midnight…